Bad Judgment All Around

Has the entire State Employees’ Credit Union, North Carolina Credit Union Department and NCUA situation become irritating, tedious and disappointing to anyone other than me?

Irritating because it didn’t need to happen. Tedious because of the lack of progress toward resolving the issue. And disappointing because of the manner in which all parties have diminished themselves.

Truth is that there’s plenty of blame to go around. The entire fiasco is a case study in suspect judgment. On everyone’s part.

How so? SECU got the ball rolling with its intentionally provocative request to publish its state CAMEL and very badly miscalculated the NCUA’s reaction to being poked in the eye. Suspect judgment. Then the NCCUD issued its incredibly shortsighted and suspiciously motivated approval to publish while feigning incredulity that the NCUA should even care about a state CAMEL. More suspect judgment. Finally comes the NCUA. Backed into a corner and feeling the understandable need to act, it produced a shoot first and aim later response that was so ill-conceived and poorly targeted that it completely missed the bad guys and hit innocent bystanders instead. Even more suspect judgment.

SECU, NCCUD and the NCUA all seem to be righteously clear on their rights but a little fuzzy on their responsibilities. It’s time for one of the key players, and preferably more than one, to break the impasse. A framework needs to be established for reasonably addressing and resolving future such regulatory conflicts.